Five Ways to Engage Your Audience Virtually

As the world adapts to the challenges of the Coronavirus outbreak, a live event or face-to-face meeting might not always be possible. With these issues in mind, and the continuing trend towards distributed workforces, it’s time to find out how technology can really connect us from across the world or around the corner.

Long range communication isn’t new (we watched a live broadcast from the surface of the Moon more than 50 years ago!), but the technology has come along leaps and bounds in recent years. The development of massive mobile communications networks and advancements in network speeds in general means a major increase in available bandwidth. That means more data to take us from an era of primarily audio communication to video and rich multimedia.

This has changed the way we work and watch and play and it is also having a major impact on the events industry as gatherings are moving into virtual spaces. Read on for some tips on engaging with your audience, virtually.

Host a Video Meeting
The convenience of video conferencing is now matched by high quality video streams and easy to use collaboration tools. The ability to share your screen, use a laser pointer and more while also connecting with clients or colleagues all over the world is a wonderful development in communications technology.

Some platforms even allow for live interpreters to make the meetings truly universal.

Integrate with Other Platforms
If you’re planning a live stream, it can be useful to use an established platform to host your video. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn can all be utilised in this way. This brings the advantage of excellent optimisation and stability as well as brand recognition, a greater potential reach and a variety of tools you can use to analyse your audience after the fact.

You can use Periscope’s handy app on iOS or Android to edit your details and easily pick a starting point for your broadcast

Create a Virtual Conference
If you need to go bigger than a video chat, consider creating a full conference experience online. You can build a totally bespoke experience with a fully branded lobby area, leading to a number of separate rooms. Virtual attendees can click into these rooms to gain access to talks in real time, with the ability to ask questions whenever they like. These sessions can then be available for playback for anyone who missed them the first time, and you can also create break out areas for discussion or Q&As with guests.

Use Those Tools for Engagement
It happens in real life meetings too, the drift of attention span, the waning in the flow of questions… In online meetings, it can be even more challenging to ensure that your audience remains attentive so you have some tools at your disposal. Ask questions via onscreen polls and call out the results, get specific questions from attendees or even get them involved with gamification which tracks their correct answers and announce a winner at the end.

Remember the Human Connection
You may not be in the same office, or majestic conference room, but you are still individuals looking to make a connection with others. Say hello, talk about yourself and encourage others to get involved too. Start by suggesting that everyone close those other tabs and put their phone on silent and make them feel like they are a part of what you are presenting, no matter where they are in the world.